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Rural Values, National Effects

By

Paul Beston

Updated Aug. 19, 2006 12:01 a.m. ET

Welcome to the Homeland By Brian Mann Steerforth, 288 pages, $24.95

Surveying the young American nation in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville predicted that industrial, commercial work would present an increasingly strong allure to citizens of a democracy. Agriculture required patience that men of ambition might not possess, especially when more promising chances awaited them elsewhere. "The choice of such a man as we have supposed is soon made," de Tocqueville wrote of the striving American. "He sells his...